Wasn't that from Something Awful?
Yeah, some goon made it for one of his own forums but decided to post it in the BYOB (take it easy to the max) section, and the place went nuts. Everyone fell in love with it, and it was bought as an emoticon almost immediately, this was back in
2006 I believe 2007.
It was picked up by 4chan around late 2007-ish or early 2008, I'm not quite sure. Someone else could fill in those details.
http://driph.com/words/2008/04/origin-of-awesome/
Yeah this is pretty exact. Essentially a goon picked it up somewhere and posted it. The original creator did a pretty smart move not divulging herself.
It was used all over the place on the forums for a good portion of 2007 until it almost became a bannable offense, although the mods settled with changing the tag to :forgetyou: and switching the original awesome smiley emote :awesome: with an emote of a nerd getting an erection. It was finally switched to the tag :iamacigarette: and remained that way. It's one way to kill an
in situ meme anyways.
